State looks at land model of AP capital to build Bidadi township

Project aims to decongest B'luru and develop towns around it

 The Karnataka government is looking at Andhra Pradesh’s success in Amaravati land procurement to push the much-delayed integrated satellite township at Bidadi in Ramanagar district on the outskirts Bengaluru.

A team of senior bureaucrats from Karnataka recently visited Amaravati to study land procurement for AP’s new capital. Under the land procurement plan, the government, instead of paying monetary compensation to farmers who part with their land, will share a part of the developed land and pay a fixed stipend for ten years.

Bengaluru Development Minister K J George told Deccan Herald that he had sent a team of officials to study the Amaravati model. The Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA), which is the nodal agency for the Bidadi township, will make a presentation to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Amaravati on December 29 and how it could be replicated here. The chief minister is also the chairman of the BMRDA.

Soon after taking office in 2013, Siddaramaiah had told the Legislative Assembly that the government would put the Bidadi township project on hold until the Parliament passed the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill.

The government, however, decided to go ahead with the Bidadi project after studying the less cumbersome and inexpensive land procurement by the AP government. “We will take a decision at the meeting next week. Once the approval is given, the BMRDA will go ahead with the project,” George said.

A source said that based on the outcome of the meeting and the success rate of implementation, the government would take up other township projects. “We had to start somewhere and Bidadi was ideal,” a senior bureaucrat said.

As per the original plan, the Bidadi township project is spread over 9,684 acres, including 2,725 acres of government and 6,959 acres of private land. Besides residential plots (25 per cent of the total land), the township will have land for economic activities (25 per cent), roads and utilities (25 per cent), park and open spaces (15 per cent) and civic amenity space (10 per cent).

Five townships in all

Bidadi is one of the five integrated townships planned by the then JD(S)-BJP government in 2006 as part of Greater Bengaluru. The idea was to decongest the Bangalore Metropolitan Area and ensure balanced urban growth in the Bangalore Metropolitan Region.

The project failed to take off as the real estate major DLF Ltd backed out of Bidadi citing “poor sentiments” in the realty sector due to recession. Similarly, another project at Nandagudi near Hoskote was shelved following protests by farmers. The other townships were planned at Kasaba hobli in Ramanagar, Soluru hobli near Magadi and Sathanur in Kanakapura.

What’s the Amaravati model?

Amaravati is the proposed new capital of Andhra Pradesh coming up on 33,000 acres of land near Guntur. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu decided to go for land procurement instead of land acquisition to avoid resistance from farmers as well as time and the cost. Under the new procurement policy, farmers will be given one-third of the developed land besides a stipend of Rs 32,000 per year per acre of barren land for ten years. Fertile land owners will get Rs 50,000 per acre for ten years. As a result, the AP government managed to get the land in time. The model is being studied by various states and the Union government.